The Truth About Heaven
by hell-whim
Summary: He’s never really liked the stories they tell, anyway. BJ centric AU


**Title:** The Truth About Heaven

**Author:** freak-pudding

**Disclaimer:** _MASH_ and all of associated articles are the property of Richard Hooker, CBS, and 20th Century Fox. No copyright infringement intended, and no monetary profit was made.

**Summary:** He's never really liked the stories they tell, anyway. BJ-centric AU

**Author's Notes:** First in "Dinner and a Movie" personal challenge. Challenge details at bottom. Set some unspecific time post S.6. Enjoy.

"_Yesterday you were going to tell me about the river. Do you remember that?" _

"_Yeah."_

"_I want you to talk about that day, BJ. Tell me about the river."_

"_Okay."_

_Sunlight beams through the muddled plastic windows of the makeshift wall behind his head._

"_BJ?"_

_He blows out the waiting breath in a cool, steady stream._

Rain pitters against the water, casting tiny, interminable ripples against the shore. Tall blades of thick foreign grass bend against the onslaught, bouncing wildly with each hit. The soil, stirred up by a torrent of running feet and falling bombs, settles into a viscous sludge that sticks to his boots, painting over the dried brown of old blood.

Hawk's hand is curled, claw-like, lying on the center of his chest, barely covering the edges of a deep hole. His head lies limp and lolling against BJ's shoulder.

Knees aching, BJ collapses with a painful squelch into the red Korean mud. The whistle and clunk of a mortar shell hits twenty, fifty yards away, sending a spray of fiery blossoms into the stagnant air. BJ curls his body over Hawk's, cradling him, protecting.

Hawk gives a wheezing cough, an unsteady breath. The hand on his chest squeezes, still clawing, trying to put back something that'll never be found. The other arm loops around BJ's neck, a blood-soaked fist resting on his shoulder, weak, fingers rubbing back and forth over each other through a slick of scarlet.

Hawkeye's breath rattles against his ear as BJ leans back, legs twisting beneath the weight of Hawk's body and his, and he slides them along until Hawkeye's propped against one of his knees. The cold air sears BJ's lungs as he pants, trying to clear the haze from his head. Hawk stares at him, blue irises rimmed in terrified white.

"_If I'd known that this was the last time me and Hawk would've spoken to each other, I'd've thought of something better to say."_

Cold, shaking, soaked, BJ wheeze in a few stinging breaths and forces something out.

"Hiya, Hawk."

"Hi, Beej."

Hawkeye draws breath in quick, thready gasps, his fingers closing and opening with each muted beat of the pulse in his neck. The paper-thin skin above the artery jumps as BJ watches, a gentle thump now and then of a steadily slowing rhythm.

BJ can hear movement in the trees behind them, probably the Chinese advancing, but he doesn't care—can't care, can't summon the will to focus on anything but the frail, half-folded body of Hawk sprawled in his lap.

"It's cold."

"Yeah."

Machine gun fire reaches them in angry staccato bursts, a breaking pattern that tells him they're somewhere near the bottom of the valley.

"It's quiet now," Hawk whispers.

"I asked them to keep the war down today."

Hawkeye coughs, a feeble attempt at a conciliatory laugh, and it sends a fine red mist over his lips, coating his teeth and soaking the already drenched fabric of BJ's shirt. The rain washes Hawk's blood into a pink river that flows across his chin, over his dog tags, down to the mud. He struggles through the next breath, choking on something deep inside.

"I'm dying."

His head rolls along the brace of BJ's arm, eyes focusing on the far-away flares of artillery fire. BJ's left staring at the torn expanse of Hawkeye's heaving chest, at fingers scraping a bloody and fragmented hole just beside his breastbone.

"_It's alright, BJ."_

"_It's just—there was so much blood."_

_He turns away, voice cracking._

"So _much."_

The sheer exhaustion staggers him when it hits, rocks him back on his awkwardly-twisted heels. He can't think about what's happening, can't consider, can't let it inside. He wants to drop back, fall into the mud, close his eyes for _one_ damn minute and just let everything go, stop caring, stop knowing, stop _living_ this nightmare for one single solitary moment.

He wants what he knows he can't have—Mill Valley and Peggy and chocolate milk on a patio built with his own hands. He wants out.

"_I didn't want it to be true. I didn't think about it. It just…God. There we were, sitting next to a river neither of us knew the name of, and he was just…"_

Frantic, free hand flailing, BJ digs into the mud near them, searching.

"You dropped it."

Hawk coughs again, stopping BJ just long enough to get another word in.

"In the trees. You dropped your med bag. When you picked me up."

The ambience, an explosion, fades a bit, the echoes moving north, replaced by the hiss of spattering rain. A flash illuminates Hawkeye's face momentarily as his head slowly turns back.

"Hawk, I'm…I'm sorry…"

"_You dropped your medical bag?"_

"_Yeah."_

_His breath puffs white as he leans forward, stretching sore, glove-clad fingers over the open stove._

"_There's nothing you could've done about that, BJ."_

"_I know."_

There's silence for a while, punctuated by the occasional echo of gunfire from a distant hill. Water laps the shore of the darkened river, hiding God knows what from the night.

The rain has lightened, but only a little.

"There's a letter in my footlocker."

BJ's head turns sharply, a transition, the slamming down of a wall before the onslaught.

"Radar said they'd send a chopper after a few hours."

"BJ…"

"It'll be here soon."

"BJ, please…"

BJ looks stoically away, biting his lip just to feel the pain.

"Don't say it, Hawk."

"There's a letter."

The hand brushing the hair from Hawk's forehead trails irregular streaks of bright blood, and BJ realizes with a start that the hand is his own.

"There's a letter in my locker. One…you…"

He swallows past something—probably a clot that's stuck. The fingers on BJ's shoulder flex, open, closed, skin sliding over skin in a varnish of thick blood.

"Margaret and…my dad…"

"_I could tell it was getting harder for him. To speak, I mean. He was…he was fading. He'd pause for a long time between words, like just thinking of what to say next was too much."_

"Erin, too, I…"

"Don't, okay? Don't talk. You'll be fine, Hawk, I promise."

"Can't."

And BJ's finally looking back at him, _really_ looking, eyes locked. This is important, Hawk's widened eyes tell him, begging him to listen.

"Two rules of…war. People…"

Hawk's mouth moves wordlessly for a minute, eyes wide and filled with fear. His body tenses, a fragile thread ready to snap.

"Hawk? Hawkeye!"

"_It's alright, BJ. Just calm down."_

Hawkeye gasps, then coughs, spitting up blood.

"People die," he finishes, struggling. BJ tightens his grip on Hawkeye's body, like it can help. Like it'll keep him there. "And we can't change that."

"_We can stop there if you like."_

"_No, I…"_

_He grabs the thermos from between them, taking a deep swig of Klinger's special tea. It rips a trail of fire down his throat, and he comes up coughing._

"_No, Sidney. I have to…I can't tell this again. I have to finish now, or never at all."_

_Sidney leans back in Potter's chair, fingertips coming together, contemplative._

"_Alright. If you must."_

There's quiet then, _real_ quiet, and BJ lifts his head, glances around.

"Hey, you hear that?"

Hawk doesn't move, leaves his face buried against BJ's shoulder.

"Hawk, it's quiet! I think the fighting's moved."

Hawkeye lifts his head, the tiniest bit, neck straining, and casts a whirling glance around them. His face is pale, cheeks deeply sunken, eyes blurred and red-rimmed.

"Hawk?"

His chest rises, then falls, skips a few beats and rises again. BJ cradles Hawkeye's shoulders, feeling sick inside, knowing what's coming.

_There's silence in the office, too, and Sidney follows the other man's unfocused gaze to a picture on the far wall._

_It's one of Potter's pieces, a portrait of Hawkeye sitting, feet up, brandy glass raised in salute, an impish smile gracing his unshaven face._

"_BJ?"_

There's a faint noise in the distance, a humming buzz, and he barely registers it as choppers.

"Hawkeye?"

He can feel the trembling of Hawkeye's body, and it travels up his hands, his arms, his chest, until BJ's shaking, too. The fist, its fingers running over themselves on his shoulder, is white-knuckled, panicked. Too afraid to let go.

"_He said something then that I don't think I'll ever forget."_

The drone of the choppers grows closer, volume rising, and Hawkeye's staring blankly away at the darkening Korean sky, the scarlet sun rising peacefully over the fog-rimmed mountains.

"I want to go home."

It comes as barely a whisper, the tiniest hint of sound that BJ almost misses. Tears flood Hawk's eyes, trail down his cheeks to mix with the rain and his blood.

"I just want to go home."

BJ reaches up, squeezes the hand on his shoulder, shaking, holding back, trying to be strong.

"_And then he was gone. Just like that. No 'good-bye', no quip, no smile. Just gone."_

_His head is turned away, and Sidney notices for the first time a letter sitting on Colonel Potter's desk._

"_He left us all letters. Well, most of us."_

"_Who got one?"_

"_Me, Father Mulcahy, Margaret, the colonel, Radar, Charles, Klinger…"_

"_His closest friends?"_

"_Yeah. He even wrote one to Trapper John."_

"_And Erin?"_

_BJ ducks his chin at the letter before him._

"_There. It says she shouldn't get it until her eighteenth birthday."_

"_What does it say?"_

"_It's a list."_

"_Of?"_

"_Names, ranks, and serial numbers of every boy I've operated on or assisted. Every single one of them, right up to a week before—"_

_He stops himself then, head dropping, eyes focusing on the closed fists._

"_Hawk used to tell me stories, when I first came here. It was too loud, and I was too scared, and neither of us could sleep. So he'd tell stories."_

_BJ glances up again, first at the letter, then to the painting._

"_I keep thinking…this isn't how he'd end it."_

_He fingers the groves in the arms of his chair._

"_This can't be how he ends."_

**Author's Notes:** "Dinner and a Movie" is a personal challenge I've set for myself, in an attempt to jumpstart my creativity. I take a scene from a movie and a song, and I go from there. This time it was the river scene from _Forrest Gump_ and Armor for Sleep's "The Truth About Heaven".


End file.
